Refugees flee Kosovo for Albania

A line of refugees stretched for a mile across the Albanian border at Morini, watched by about 10 Yugoslav army soldiers holding machine guns. Many of the 5,000 refugees including barefoot women, pregnant women and mothers holding children's hands were weeping.

Western officials said unconfirmed reports appeared to point to a savage new campaign of "ethnic cleansing" that has escalated dramatically since NATO attacks began on Wednesday.

The reports of atrocities have been virtually impossible to confirm since monitors and most foreign reporters left Kosovo last week under increasing threats to their security.

Yet the weight of testimony by refugees pointed to a swelling humanitarian crisis.

The refugees said tens of thousands more were following them, while Albania's information minister, Musa Uliqini, said on local television late Saturday that as many as 50,000 could cross the border in upcoming days.

"They told us there's no more

BYLINE1:"They told us there's no more place for Albanians in Kosovo."

BYLINE2:

SUBHEAD:

Yakup Bytici, 13

place for Albanians in Kosovo," said Yakup Bytici, 13, from Zojs village in the west of Kosovo, the predominantly ethnic Albanian province in southern Serbia.

In the capital Tirana, the government said 20,000 refugees had arrived by late Saturday, mostly women and children from villages around Prizren.

Many refugees said they had seen the bodies of about 20 people killed in the Kosovo village of Landovic.

Besides the accounts of refugees arriving in both Albania and Macedonia, ethnic Albanian sources remaining in the Serbian province made allegations of killing, kidnapping, and looting by paramilitary gangs, some targeting civilians in door-to-door raids.

Kosova Press, the ethnic Albanian rebels' news agency, said the bodies of 33 massacred Albanians were found floating in the river between Orahovac and Djakovica, and also claimed five children and three women were

among 13 killed people in Bela Crkva.

The Albanian government accused Serb police and military gangs of "harassing and eliminating" well-known Kosovars, saying intellectuals and political leaders were missing, including members of the Kosovo delegation at peace talks in France.

"There are clear signs now that an all-out Serbian offensive against the Kosovo Albanian people has started," said British Defense Secretary George Robertson.

"Violence is widespread."

None of the refugees interviewed by Associated Press reporters outside Kosovo's borders Saturday said they had witnessed killings.

But many of about 250 at a crossing north of Macedonia's capital, Skopje, said villages near the border had been emptied at gunpoint, and one man had a black eye which he said came from being hit by a rifle butt.

The Kosovars crossing at Morini, 15 miles northeast of the Albanian town of Kukes, said they didn't know where they would go. Albanian villagers stood by the road offering to take them in.

But the area around Kukes, which has promised to accept 3,000 refugees, was likely to be overwhelmed by the influx after thousands already arrived during fighting in Kosovo last year.

The refugees reported heavy fighting in recent days and said they had passed six burning villages on their way out: Piran, Landovic, Celine, Radobrav, Nagafc and Brestovc.

The first group to arrive at Morini described a tumultuous two days starting with a Serb attack on their village, Krushj e Madhe, on Thursday. They said they fled to the mountains, but on Friday, Serb forces sprayed the area with bullets, found 400 to 500 people and took them down to the village.